Mahayana

It's very much the me also might disappear, but then it's just for oneself.

The Mahayana developed because, uh, w- how about all the rest of us? You know, wait a minute, you know, so you, you are free from all fetters and, you know, you're, you're, you're, you know, y- you're in some exalted state, and here are the rest of us suckers, you know? So, uh, the Mahayana developed that li- liberation and enlightenment was not singular in any way.

As one learns when one takes the bodhisattva vow, one vows to not attain enlightenment until every other sentient being has gone before us.

It puts our idea of ourself at the back of the line, the last one in.

Arhats are enlightened.

Later on in Mahayana, obviously, we see that Arhat's ship is described as a lesser enlightenment or as an incomplete enlightenment, but we're not there yet.

We're in the Pali Canon.

And so we're saying that Arhat's ship is the ideal presented by the Buddha, the ideal that is accessible to sentient beings, and the ideal that reflects the definition of enlightenment that we've given before on the show of being omniscience.

And you mentioned the two wings of wisdom and compassion.

Sometimes in Mahayana, they have that idea.

And in other words... compassion the wisdom they say without compassion is inert so the so the aphorism goes but compassion without wisdom is dumb and sometimes can do more harm than good this is this do-gooding isn't it this idea of do-gooding people who want to go around all the time and they're doing good it seems

sometimes to make themselves feel better

The self is the biggest thing in the universe.

You can actually peek around and say, oh yeah, there's other things going on.

but yeah how far can they take you they'll take you quite a ways if you'll do them especially if you'll do them in conjunction with other wisdom practices basically insight practice so yeah I think are they essential for the path yeah the wisdom and compassion of the Mahayana yeah you gotta have both wings working I think of a friend of mine who was really into the wisdom aspect but he was kind of lagging in the compassion thing I don't think he ever really got that yeah I don't think he got as far along the path as he could have and I meet other people who are yeah they're wonderfully compassionate people but it's kind of dumb compassion and yeah they can And all of us are on that spectrum somewhere.

And what we want to do is get both of them going as strongly as we can.

And when he was a student, one of the Dharma inquiries, one of the teachings that really caught his attention was this question about hearing the insentient beings preach the Dharma.

So there's a teaching in the Avatamsaka Sutra, one of the Mahayana sutras, that says the earth expounds Dharma.

The earth expounds Dharma.

Then it says living beings expound it throughout the three times, which is past, present, and future.

What's going on here?" So the first recorded question that we have of him as a student is he was young, probably a teenager, maybe even younger, and he was receiving a teaching on the Heart Sutra.

And the Heart Sutra is the chant that we chanted during morning service.

We'll chant it in Sino-Japanese tomorrow, but we always chant the Heart Sutra in the morning, so it's a very primary Mahayana teaching.

And they were...

Um, Ajahn, is...

After listening to all the question, um, I, I kind of, um, having a comparison to teaching, um, in the Mahayana, eight senses.

Six senses?

Si- eight co- consi- consciousness.

It looks like a contradiction, for sure.

But in the framework of Mahayana and Chan Buddhism, it is actually the precise mechanism of his power.

It is the paradox of compassionate detachment.

Walk me through that because right now it just looks like a guy playing both sides.

the fact that you're talking about, let's move beyond that simple understanding.

And I think one of the devices you used that's particular within Mahayana Buddhism of, as you described, conventional truth, that which we live, that's in front of us, there's people around us, we conflict, we do things.

But the kind of ultimate piece I think that everything points to is you're saying out loud and within the tradition, We are all interdependent.

We are all interconnected ultimately.